If I was to write my thoughts today, right now, I’d have to say … well, nothing, really. I can usually huddle warmly into a café, coffee-at-elbow, and pour out 1,000 or more words.

Not today.

Today there’s passing cars, passing pedestrians and nothing passing through my mind.

This is both Disconcerting and reassuring.

Disconcerting as I love writing – the process of doing it more than having it done – and to sit amid the busy world’s cacophony, to be untouched by any of it and, in the same precious moments, to be moved by my Voice and feel the connection with that which is greater and wiser than I. There’s a sense of being home, of being embraced and graced by a presence that’s both myself and beyond myself, as if meeting a stranger and quietly knowing the stranger is an old friend I’ve missed for lifetimes … and that friend is this pen-wielding, coffee-drinking, placidly-smiling me who soaks up every word he’s presented with and gently lays them between the lines so kindly provided. It’s me writing and it’s Bigger Me writing. Both together.

The connection between us is palpable and the words have colour, weight and sound. They sing through my mind and slither down my pen like mischievous children. I release them onto the page and they’re free to give themselves to any who wishes to be touched anew.

Not to have these boisterous words or to feel Bigger Me beside me, inside me, is disconcerting. My mind’s like a puppet with the strings cut. I have no less Peace for peace, by definition and experience, is complete in itself. Peace needs no other to be itself, any more than water needs more water to be more itself.

I am at peace in this gracious moment but there’s always a But, isn’t there? We’re always wanting more, though we’re all there is.

The human dichotomy.

I want the peace of God; the peace that passeth all understanding and passeth all worldly experience. The peace that fills every pore of my soul. The peace that contains all. I want that everything … but I want more, as if there’s more. I want that connection with Bigger Me, with the words, for they’re somehow smaller and more tangible than peace unmitigated. I can almost touch the velvety smooth Bigger Me and smell the homely, wood-smoke of the words as they flow through.

I want the world of God but – yes, there it goes again – I also want the deepest serenity that this sorry, grasping world can give.

Perhaps I’ll never be truly happy, wanting two mutually exclusive experiences. And, till I’m able to let one go, I may not feel the depth of the other.

Pesky, demanding human that I am!

This silence from my Voice is also reassuring for I recently came to realise just how angry and vindictive a person I am. So many unslept nights have been given over to thoughts of revenge, blame and judgement of someone or other. Anyone can, of course, play the blame game and we can invite anyone else in with us. If we’re able to eventually forgive a dozen vicious people, there’ll always be another dozen to choose from. They can be next door or across the planet, dead or alive, married to or estranged from us. Blame holds up no barriers. We can choose anyone and, once chosen, away go the attack thoughts, the anger thoughts, the victim thoughts and every other painful thought we can hurl at them.

The humour of judgement is hidden while we vent our bile and curse our shadows. However, as the sun sneaks above the horizon and the light quietly creeps into the fetid cracks of our misery, we remember that our dirty little thoughts stick to no one but ourselves.

But – yes, another but – does that stop us dashing back to the uncomfortable comfort zone of our perceived victimhood? Of course not! We love spewing on ourselves, keeping ourselves awake and grimly vowing yet another calamity on some innocent fool. We just love it. Well, I do … I must for I keep doing it.

Then, when I realised just how deeply embedded I was in the ritual of revenge, I determined to release it and spend the nights gently asleep. As soon as the dragon realised it had been spotted, as soon as I saw my mawkish madness for what it was, the depravity increased. Determined not to release me, the claws dug deeper into my mind and the nightmares increased.

But I was determined. Every threat thought that came up was forgiven. Every perceived enemy was forgiven. Every one of my actions was forgiven. And still the monster came on. It breathed its fire and the nightmares of blame flared up as if invincible and uncontrollable.

But still I Forgave. I had to. There was nought left to do. I forgave, forgave and forgave and that exhausted me more than the Dramas of Damnation. But (yes, another!) some quiet, still Voice told me there was a way through and it was the quiet, still way.

The vengeance was in my mind and so was the stillness. I simply had to choose.

So I chose. I chose a thousand times a thousand, every second of every night and then a quietness flowed across all I discerned.

I didn’t realise the guilt-fired anger had passed till some time after it did. My dreams turned to mush – a million snippets of irrelevance, like a soap opera chopped to pieces, randomly stiched together and played at a hundred times the normal speed – all activity and no action. My mind was not empty but it was not bitter. Just bounced by the inconsequential nothings that it gathered.

I forgave them, too.

Now I have nothing.

A rattling truck passes. Two blustering men pass. A motorbike. A car. A hawk in a wide open sky. A waitress. A patron. They all pass in my outer world but nothing passes through my inner one.

I choose not disconcerting but forgiveness for this unaccustomed space of peace. This serenity without walls. The hawk in an empty sky. Me empty in emptiness.

And so it is that I turn to relief that nothing transpired and, in that nothingness, these words gaily sneaked upon the page.

“How did that happen?” I wonder.